iPhone: Now Worth Every Penny

I’m browsing the siteslive blogging the Apple iPhone SDK press conference and what do I see?

Wait for it.

Microsoft Exchange support for email. (Cue the Geek Cheer!)

“We have licensed the ActiveSync protocol to build directly into the iPhone,” Schiller says. That’s a huge request from their customers.

With ActiveSync, the iPhone talks directly to Exchange. So the iPhone will get push e-mail, push calendaring, push contacts, global access lists, and remote wipe, all while talking to Exchange. And it’s built into the existing applications — mail goes into the same Mail program, calendar into the same Calendar, and so on.

In all seriousness – this must have feature will soon be available for all of us iPhone users who worked in an environment that is heavily littered with Microsoft Enterprise applications. We’ve been limited to IMAP and POP up til now, and while these ‘work’, they’re not the real thing. Exchange support for the iPhone will be the killer app.